Content marketing is the most effective and lucrative form of online marketing, because it not only works, it also builds a media asset at the same time. So it makes sense to understand exactly what makes content effective, right?

Meaningful content is an experience

Content (what you say) without copywriting (how you say it) can be a complete waste of otherwise valuable information. But no matter how you say it, what you say has to have meaning to the right people.

Agreed, I don’t think enough bloggers or micro-bloggers understand how to create meaningful content. (*ahem* Twitter users: I don’t care that you just went to the restroom) . It’s something that we can all get better at.

I second that. Everyone is creating “content” but much of it is like listening to a 12 year old girl (my daughter) talk for hours with her friends. There’s nothing there and what is there could of been expressed in ONE sentence!

The “problem” is that the majority are lazy and writing REAL content takes some research and a lot of time and iterating.

If you don’t have something of value to give to your readers, they will feel like not only have they wasted their time, but also annoyed if your content seems to be full of rah-rah’s and cheering of your own material. To get and keep residual traffic, give them something they can relate to and refer back to time and time again.

Whether it’s a post or a significant feedback conversation in person, the keys for me are in the 3 M’s: the message must be (1) meaningful, (2) motivating, and (3) memorable. Be relevant, be limited in how much you hope to cover and make it easy to remember.

That’s so true Marc, it should be easier enough to remember. That’s what helps our readers. GO on advising long time and no one would want to read you. Give them the proof, get recommended and do it quickly.

Good continuation from Sonia’s article. The hard part is getting the reader (or listener or viewer) to actually do something with that content. Following an article or piece of content with a Case Study that takes them by the hand and walks them through your proposal is sometimes an effective way of reinforcing the original content message.

It can be the hard part, but it’s surprisingly how far you can get just by asking them to do something simple.

Depending on the reader to decide on her own what to do, out of a universe of possibilities, rarely works. It will work on the 1% of your readership who are superstars, but I find it better to decide myself what I want them to do, then spell that out.

I do the same for paid/teaching content, I always pair it with specific next actions for the learner to take.

Well, for motivating them to take action, one should make the idea as simple as possible, make it convincing and turn it into a ‘need’. That’s how you get it done. If you say ‘you may’ you are not doing it right. If you say ‘it’s must’ they’ll probably look forward to applying it.

I love this! I believe that our “sweet spot” in defining our offering is not only a.) what we’re great at and love to do and b.) what the client wants, combined with c.) what the client is willing to pay for, but also d.) what the client will actually use (or what you’re calling action) and hopefully get results with. Because without that fourth point, everything stops — your satisfaction level stops, the quality of the relationship stops, the chance for other people to see the results and be attracted stops, the flow of energy stops. I’ve compared it all to an energy cycle that needs to perpetuate, as energy needs to keep moving, and you’re taking a similar path here with a cycle that repeats with social media, thanks to content marketing. It’s yet another dimension to my thinking — thanks so much!

To me, the important strategy here is to begin with the end in mind. While the process ends with “Result – Your ideal prospect is a more productive writer,” you should begin by asking “How can my audience be better writers?” Then fill in the steps going backward. Done right, it should help you develop a stronger sense of meaningful content, rather than just plopping a bunch of here’s-what-I-think stuff on a page.

I try always to follow the golden rule you point out here..
My loyal subscriber feel comfortable about my writing.
However I’m lacking from some effectiveness to reach the right people.
What do you recommend to reach the next level?

I think it’s also worth saying that writing Meaningful Content does not mean meaningful for everybody on the net. Rather, just make it meaningful and very useful to your readers. Just decide exactly what you want (as already pointed out in the article) and start focusing on that.

Mike Lopez has it spot on though – you need to ensure that your content is meaningful to the right people, otherwise you’re not going to get the desired action. It’s all well and good making burgeoning bloggers more productive, but you’re unlikely to get the desired action from someone who just stumbles accross your post through a social bookmarking site.

I guess what I’m getting at is that while it’s sensible to focus on actions and results, the key point on your list (for me anyway) is always 2. Context.

I agree that action step can be the most difficult part to accomplish especially without appearing pushy. I often write my content with this objective in mind. I make it easy for my readers by to take the desired action I want by asking well chosen questions throughout my articles. I do this so when they get to my call to action, it seems like the next logical step.

Brian is right, when you are creating webcontent or blog posts you are essentially creating Assets.

In the world of online marketing, and generating inbound links to your website for more traffic and SERP rankings, you need to use your websites assets and leverage those as linkbuilders for you, blog posts are a great way of using your websites assets to generate links. But you must make them “meaningful content” and give the reader a reason to link back to you.

Makes sense, but is it possible to create meaningful content that no one will ever see? Is it possible that I write the most prolific piece of journalism of the last century but no one will ever read it, and if so, is it still meaningful if no one is able to judge it?

In my definition of Meaningful content really is summarized to “Providing Value to Your Audience”, or “Filling their needs, wants through your content” If you got that nailed down, than the next step would be to promote your content. Use Social Media Marketing strategies to notify the top bloggers, twitter users, facebook fan pages about your content and let them know how it would benefit their readers and don’t say “Facebook me, or tweet me” simply respond in a friendly manner and kindly ask for a “mention or share” your content and help spread the word.

Something this simple could potentially generate a lot of traffic, and links for your blog posts if you keep persistent and pick the right thought leaders to contact and build relationships with 🙂

“The snarling enemy of meaningful content is the urge to water it down for the lowest-common denominator in the hopes of either (a) reaching an unreasonably mass audience, or (b) not offending anyone.
The result of that approach is content that means very little to anyone.”

Brian, those are profound points.

I gave a presentation yesterday about 3 tips to make your ideas sticky. I rehearsed the presentation with a trusted friend and she told me that all my examples relate to business — so people uninterested in business might not be engaged.

I considered replacing a business example with one related to art or music. But the audience is primarily business people and that’s the audience I want to reach. The consistency of my message would be diluted if I had tried to make it appeal it to the broadest possible audience.

This is and excellent point, “The snarling enemy of meaningful content is the urge to water it down for the lowest-common denominator in the hopes of either (a) reaching an unreasonably mass audience, or (b) not offending anyone.” I would call this trusting your reader and knowing your market. If you have this you don’t have to dumb your content down. You know they get what you are saying.

If you know your market, than you know what your market would like to read. Best way to really find out is to monitor your blog comments, find out what people are saying about your posts, and run surveys and polls on your blog or via email marketing strategies.

The more you know what your market’s “fears, desires, passions” are, the better your blog will be 🙂 Assuming you create content on those three emotions

Watering down our content in the hopes of not offending anyone or making it easily understandable to everyone is just doing ourselves a disservice. You’ve got to get right to the heart of what your ideal reader wants. Ignite that fire!

My question though (and I hope you’ll talk more about this) is, once they’ve read your tips and decided that they’re perfect and worth acting on, how do you get them to follow through on that action? It’s not just about measuring numbers of clicks and conversions. How do you spur them on to action?

Sherice, that’s a big topic, and one I know we’ll go into more in future posts.

You might take a look at Ethical Selling that Works from Pam Slim. (No, that’s not an aff link) Looks like she specifically gets into what a sales process looks like. We’re going to do a Third Tribe seminar with her on it this month.

In re-reading your process, it makes me pause and reflect on how I’m writing out my posts. I’ve been writing more and more in my moleskine notebook (it cuts out the distractions from dozens of browser tabs ya know). So far, it’s been effective. But the thing I should be asking myself is “what’s the outcome I’m looking for here.” If I’m hitting that target, I’m good.

Look forward to listening to the podcast tomorrow Brian, love what you all have been doing with it.

You have a ‘true fan’ here as well.. I too reach for the notebook and jot the reality tips. In Brian’s case it’s always the whole thing.

In a niche business that sits like a fresh pea in a bag of mixed veges – small + wanted but not the only one!

The next step is about joining the dots on how to keep content going forward when you are a small business. The corelation between newsletters and articles on site -off site blogs – posts. How to do this would probably be about – positioning, developing the how, where, when and whys! [or is that wise] of content.

I like the notion of a call-to-action or a takeaway. I had a professor who wrote a book, and at the end of each chapter, he had a sentence in bold that read: “THE BOTTOM LINE:” It was the one thing, if you forgot everything else, to remember from that chapter.

Beautiful insights and prose to sketch, tease out, and embellish the points.

I’m a fan of action and meaningful results. (I’m biased, the tagline in my book includes “meaningful results”)

Great point on value — and I like the way you put it.
The way I’ve framed it is “value is in the eye of the beholder” and that echoes your point.

I’m also a fan of the experience and I think experience is the differentiator.
Assuming you’ve got scenario parity — it’s experience that sets them apart.
I also think that’s the way of the Web — pay for incremental experience.
Example
1. free html
2. pay for PDF
3. pay more more print
4. pay much more for the live “experience”

Experience is a great way to differentiate and incrementally render the experience
… from freemium to premium.

Excellent information, Brian, especially coming off of Sonia’s stellar post from yesterday. I feel like I’m in school, and that’s a great thing.

I’m curious if you see this formula as a variation of the classic “sales funnel” as it applies to content marketing? Also, in your experience, do you see this as a constant cycle, or is there a point where those who have achieved results should, or will, move beyond my content?

I found this article particularly useful because I’m writing about call to actions as we speak. I enjoyed the 5 steps to holy grail content but the challenge I think is in creating consistency between each step. Thanks for the share.

This is great post Brian. I really love to write and still enjoy doing it until today. One thing that I want to share is all of us, about effective content marketing is, we need to create an influence content. Which is based on research, statistic, and examples from books.

Readers will automatically increase in confidence, once they read our content, that is full of research and proof from other expert.

…and you’ve now earned another fan! Wow! I love your blogging stye–so direct, so concise, so organized and makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much for sharing your views on this topic. As a new blogger myself, I tend to worry all the time about how I’m going to create a meaningful content that will benefit those who will read it. I’ll surely keep your advice in mind. =)

Great post with some thought provoking content. (to coin a phrase). Meaningful content is obviously vital but its also surely about personality or getting your across as well ? We all need to engage thats what makes us all unique. Great blogpost once again

I am rather new to copyblogger and LOVE this site, it’s not only full of great tips that can be applied broadly but it’s visually appealing in its simplicity (and the images you choose definitely resonate with me). Once I click thru, I can get lost here for hours! I think many people underestimate the power of design and the impact it has on your readership. If a site doesn’t appeal to me visually, I can’t stay long no matter how good the content (I know that sounds superficial but I have been known to just look for the same information conveyed more esthetically somewhere else!).

Question for you, I am a graphic designer (in addition to being a struggling writer) and I just have to know the font used for ‘copyblogger’ in your design. It feels like a trusted news font but there’s something about it that has a bit of an fun feel to it and I would love to use it in some of my layouts. I don’t really have time to do side by side comparison checks, can you share???

I think you just discoverd the ultimate formula of how to grow your list. It’s true when you help somebody get results, he will tell other people. Not only that, other people will ask him how he got these awesome results, so what he will do is forward these people to your site and because they have already seen the results they will not be suspicious or hesitating.
Awesome information, thanks.
Greg

Watering down content might get you some initial viewers if the headlines are strong and grab the reader, but you are obsolutlely right, they will be one time viewers only. TO have really good success the only way is to have strong content from the beginning.

It is all about delivering on the promise. When you do it successfully and succeed, do it poorly and it is just sure to result in failure.

If we’re talking about a couple of peices of content being meaningful – that’s easy to create. If you’re talking about a whole blog – that’s insanely difficult to create. If you’re talking about a book full of meaningful content – again – like a blog, tough to do.

It’s impossibly hard to create meaningful content in subject areas which bore you. I’ve tried. You are better off to tackle subjects you LOVE and have mad passion about.

I agree wholeheartedly. I also think that having very strong content is simply the best way to go. Social media, snappy headlines and other tricks to get people to the page help a lot. They get the bodies to the content. But without incredibly strong content to back it up, how many are really going to want to come back on regular basis?

To be successful content needs to influence, teach, question and hopefully have a new slant or idea on the topic. Simply worn-out and retreaded material will only get you so far.

Marketing is nothing without the product one is promoting. Content is so important as breathing is to life. What is the point of marketing without any product to promote. However, with the influx of products not only of different kinds but of the same kind, the dilemma that an end-user will have is …which one to choose? Of the blogs i have infront of me..which for me seems worth reading? that is when copywriting comes in…What will make me read it. Copywriting and Content, Form and Function..the best mix is still, for me, the most effective.